The prospects of an arty solo album from a member of Interpol might seem brighter if their singer hadn't already muddied the waters, but with Big Noble, Daniel Kessler delivers the atmospheric offshoot you would expect. First Light is the sound of Kessler's signature prickly, brooding guitar being fed through Joseph Fraioli's expensive modular synthesizers and "boutique effects units," which results in a kinda ambient, kinda shoegaze deluxe material of pulses, flutters and drones. The sound might be characterized as Interpol's cosmopolitan nerve gone beatifically slack, their gothic architecture flushed out with heavenly light.
On "Stay Gold" you can especially hear a lockstep Interpol guitar line, encased in a glowing ray. The touch of the guitar remains present even in Fraioli's most fountain-of-sparks treatments, an underlying clutch or muted tick. Some complex timbres are devised. On "Pedal", small slivers of guitar signal drop and bounce like marbles across the stereo channels. "Atlantic Din" has the same physical intricacy, but heavier—a ball bearing rattling in a drum. Wholeness is reinforced by elements recurring across different tracks, such as the portamento synths that keep rearing up sadly, far in the distance. But if the album has some structure, what it lacks is tension.
You wouldn't expect Kessler, known for sharp, metronomic playing, to be an inspired improviser, and he isn't, in any traditional sense—he's on his usual sleek rails, but in a ruminative, decompressed way. The post-production follows his linear lead; every track compactly blossoms, bursts and fades. Events start to feel sparse in the ongoing grand drift. There are stock recitations of digits, perfunctory field recordings of New York City.
Two-thirds through, around "Weatherman Accountable", we hit the limits of the palette, and the record abandons any pretense of being more than short, simple, processed guitar figures. It's not bad, but it is faintly generic, as the titles I've mentioned (another is called "Autumn") might attest. As sonic cathedrals go, this one feels slightly synthetic. It doesn't add much to similar work by Eno and Fripp, Fennesz, Eluvium, Rhys Chatham, Growing and countless others who've processed electric guitars into songful, airy or prickling masses. But if you need something dramatic to walk around with, it will get the job done.
